SOLSC Day 19

Has anyone else noticed how crazy the robins are this year?

Where I live, robins are so common that, honestly, they're kind of boring. In fact, when they leave for the winter, I don't even miss them. As robins are a classic sign of spring, however, I do usually notice when they return: around here, it was about two weeks ago. In the past, spring has always brought the stereotypical one or two robins hopping around on the bright, new grass, with here and there the quick beak-bob for some tasty insect morsel. Hop and bob, hop and bob, with their tiny round eyes ringed by the finest of white lines, their rusty orange chests, their dreary grayish-brown feathers, hop and bob, that's all they do.

This year, though, the first anomaly I noticed was an entire flock of robins, over twenty of them, gathered together on the median strip. They were-- what else?-- hopping and bobbing. Maybe it was just the number of them, but they looked a little frantic. A few days later, I saw a pair of robins race-walking, transversing the grassy hill across from my house. No hopping. No bobbing.

Then, just this morning, as I sleepily set out on my daily dog walk in the dim pre-dawn, I heard, more than saw, a lot of avian activity. Oh, I recognized the cardinals calling, burdee, burdee, burdee, and there were mockingbirds mimicking three or four other bird's songs, but above it all, I heard a raucous racket. It was the robins. My dog and I continued on our way through all the whistling, and chirping, and carrying-on, when, out of nowhere, whoosh, whoosh, the air churned turbulently past my jaw, and feathers brushed my ear, lifting my hair up and away from my cheek. They were gone before I ducked, two robins chasing toward the daybreak.

"Did you see that?" I asked the dog, but she was busy sniffing and had missed the whole thing.